Gaggle "From The Mouth Of The Cave"

Monday 25th June 2012

It feels like a long time since their early releases and concept-choir live shows, but today sees the release of the debut album from Gaggle, one of the most interesting musical phenomena, currently existing in the London area, and though we expected to be surprised by this record, we hadn't anticipated the level, or manner, of the revelations within, confounding our expectations, in the best possible way.

The concept of Deborah Coughlin, Gaggle, if you don't already know, are a 21 member, all woman choir - usually cloaked, and synchronised in a sort of pneumatic post-feminist mantra. The application of said choir has been, to say the least, diverse, ranging from support slots for Hurts to the performance of 1969 opera "The Brilliant and The Dark". Talking of her brilliantly quixotic project, and we mean that as a great compliment, Coughlin says “I’d always known where it would go – I knew it was a project that could cross boundaries and play in vastly different spaces". So when such an outfit make an album how does it sound? Well - the answer is that the record possesses a real, if unconventional, groove. A dark but, genuinely listenable dozen of tracks. It is steeped in futuristic oestrogen, but the effect is not an over-worthy statement of gender politics - more an intelligent, heady, modern, female reinvention of the hip-hop collective, with Coughlin at its head. The album demands to be listened to in full, but you can sample album track "Army Of Birds" via the animated album artwork below:

"From The Mouth Of The Cave" is out today (25th June 2012) via Transgressive Records. And, if you want to experience Gaggle live, they are due to play London’s Village Underground on July 4th Subscribe to Gaggle via the usual channels at www.gaggle.tv